Final version - AN ANALYSIS OF STUDENTS DIFFICULTIES IN WRITING A DESCRIPTIVE TEXT THESIS

Once writers have edited their draft, making the changes they consider to be necessary, they produce their final version.

Sometimes the first three stages of the process will take almost no time at all and we will plan, (re-)draft, and (re-)edit very quickly in our heads as we write. Nevertheless, however casually we approach the process, we will still try and plan what to write, check what we have written, and revise it before sending. This may look considerably different from both the original plan and the first draft because things have changed in the editing process.

But the writer is now ready to send the written to its intended audience.

Based on the table above, it can be concluded that the writing process in general divided into five steps are prewriting/ planning, writing, and revising, editing, and publish.

d. Difficulties in Writing

Writing is not an easy job, because one should consider some regulations in writing. When a student gets difficult in writing, they will be faced a problem in writing. According to Bill and Terry in Wiwit (2010: 11) state that why learning to write well are difficult.

They are: Variations from discipline to discipline, lack of uniform criteria and standards, lack of explicit criteria and standards, undeveloped writing process, misleading or incomplete writing instruction, incomplete understanding of the subject matter, lack of experience with and failure to understand genre, lack of consistent coaching, known- reflective writing experiences, students do not care about what they write.

Firstly, Variations from discipline to discipline; Disciplines are discourse communities with their own methods of developing and

communicating knowledge. However, students take classes in several disciplines at the same time and have difficulty mastering the different forms of inquiry and the different stylistic conventions that apply.

Secondly, Lack of uniform criteria and standards; Students develop the idea criteria, standards and definitions are arbitrary. Then, Brown (2001) and Harmer (2004) argued that writing is exploring ideas and organizing ideas. Exploring ideas includes vocabulary, interviewing someone, and discussion. Meanwhile, organizing ideas consists of ordering information in a paragraph, writing topic sentences, limiting information, using a time sequence, making an idea map, categorizing and making an outline, summarizing ideas, and writing the title. Organizing ideas is important as a paragraph need to develop cohesion and coherence, in order to be easily followed by the readers.

Thirdly, Lack of explicit criteria and standards; Students have little or no information about what constitutes appropriate writing; no clear sense of the goal they are supposed to work toward. Fourthly, the Undeveloped writing process; in many classes, students are expected to write well, but are not to do so. Fifthly, Misleading or incomplete writing instruction; In some classes, formal writing is treated solely as a list of rules governing the use of language (grammar, spelling, and punctuation) rather than as purposeful communication of an idea. In this is done, mechanical aspects of language are emphasized to the exclusion of important conceptual abilities. Often key writing concept is never addressed in course for example how to adapt one‟s knowledge to the audience and the situation is extremely important but rarely taught. Similarly, how to develop a coherent train of taught is crucial to good writing, but rarely taught.

Next, Incomplete understanding of the subject matter; Students very often have to write about subjects that are unfamiliar to them, and many types of novices in any subject area, their understanding as

they write tend to be incomplete and naïve. Thus it is very common that writing lacks coherence and structure reflecting their fragmented understanding of the topic, not necessarily their incompetence as writers. Then, Lack of experience with and failure to understand genre; Students have fewer opportunities to develop knowledge of other forms of writing and to write to a different audience.

This is line with the theories above that, Aragon et al in Abderraouf (2016:20), states that the writing difficulties may be related to features like grammar, syntax, cohesion or others, and students usually vary in facing these difficulties. Furthermore, students‟ writing difficulties may be a result of different factors, because “…not only self-strategies influence students‟ performance, but also the effectiveness of the methods and techniques that teachers apply in their English composition courses”. Significant tothe nature of writing as a cognitive process, and the amount of time and effort it requires. And they also argued that students who have low interest in writing andlearning to write mostly have low writing proficiency.

Next, there are three kinds of difficulties in writing according to Abderraouf (2016:21):

1) Problems with grammar

Grammar was defined by Neuleib in Abderraouf (2016:21) as “the internalized systemthat native speakers of a language share”. A more detailed definition was proposed byin Abderraouf (2016:21) as “the description of the ways in which words can change their forms and canbe combined into sentences in that language”.These ways are called „the grammar rules‟that are basic elements in every language and are also inseparable from writing.

Grammar rules mainly include various rules such as tenses, prepositions, word class,voice, and many others. These rules stand as a problem for many students in writing. Ininvestigating the effect of teaching grammar is different studies which that formal grammar instruction made no improvement in students writing

abilitynor on their ability to avoid errors.In other, Thornbury (1994:1) explains that grammar attempts to explain why the following sentences are acceptable.

In addition, Bahri and Sugeng in Abderraouf (2016:20) state that themain writing difficulties students find in relation to grammar is the low understanding ofgrammar, which results later on in difficulties in arranging proper writing.

As Richard and Renandya (2002:145) state “grammar is too important to be ignored, and without a good knowledge of grammar, learners‟ language development will be severely constrained”. It means that the use of correct grammar will influence the sense of students‟ writing in order to catch readers interesting with the story that the students tell.

2) Vocabulary

According, Hadfield (2008:45) divides vocabulary into two kinds of vocabulary, there are :

a) Productive (active) vocabulary is words that they are able to produce themselves.

b) Receptive vocabulary (passive) is words that they understand but may never produce.

It supported by Nation (2001:11) we can distinguish four kinds of vocabulary in the text, those are :

a) High-Frequency Words

High-frequency words are vocabulary that mostly appears in the text. There is a small group of high frequency which is very important because these words cover a very large proportion of the running words in spoken and written texts and occur in all kinds of the language.

b) Academic Words

The text is from an academic textbook and contains many words that are common in different kinds of academic text:

policy, phase, adjusted, sustained. Typically these words make up about 9% of the running words in the text.

c) Technical Words

The text contains some words that are very closely related to the topic and subject of the text. These words include indigenous, regeneration, pod carp, beech, rimy, and timber.

These words are reasonably common in this topic area but not so common elsewhere. As soon as we see them, we know that the topic is being dealt with. Technical words like this typically cover about 5% of the running words in a text.

d) Low-Frequency Words

This group is included words like zoned, pioneering and perpetuity, aired and pastoral. They make up over 5% of the words in an academic text. There are thousands of them in the language, by far the biggest group of words. They consist of the technical words for other subject areas, proper nouns, words that almost include the high-frequency list and words that we rarely use in the language. Lack of vocabulary makes what learners write become uninteresting, and boring.

In another opinion, Harris et al (2014:58), who states that lack of vocabulary makes students cannot express their ideas. They do not know what words they have to use to put their thought in their writing. Also, because of the lack of vocabulary, the students use the same words in a different context. This condition will affect the students‟ writing quality because the choice of words in writing will influence the content of their writing. Readers will get difficulties to understand and comprehend students‟ writing because the words that are used will influence the meaning of the writing. Vocabulary is an important aspect in language skills as suggested by Nation in Abderraouf (2016:22) Vocabulary is defined by the Cambridge dictionary as “all the words known andused by a person”. Vocabulary related difficulties are generally;

students failing to recall important words to use, failing to use the appropriate words and poor vocabulary. Moreimportantly, knowing words generally means knowing their meanings, basic forms.

Based on the theories above it can be seen that difiiculties in vocabulry distinguish in some level, started from high-frequency words, academic words, technical words, and low frequency words. Depends on the writer need in writing.

Then, Nakata in Abderraouf (2016:22) noted that vocabulary acquisition is an ongoing process that requires students‟

constant repetition and use of words tobe effectively attained in the long term memory and then retrieved once needed. Developing vocabulary through memorizing words of a list is not sufficient, for students to acquirevocabulary they need to learn words as a part of the context in which they occur. This methodis proven to be beneficial for “it helps the student understand the word‟s correct usage”. Moreover, Yongqi Gu in Abderraouf (2016:22) said that

“vocabulary acquisition is a learner-centered activity with the effectiveness of the learner‟sstrategies depending on his/her attitude and motivation towards new vocabulary acquisition”.

Then, Erisda (2017:22) vocabulary is one of the important aspects that must learn students in foreign language learning. Vocabulary plays important role in language learning. Vocabulary can help the learners mastering skills in language learning. Vocabulary often seems to be the least systematized and the least well centered for all the aspects of learning a foreign language. Watkins in Erisda (2017:22) states that in an approach that values the ability to communicate, vocabulary is essential, and in recent years vocabulary has become increasingly central to language teaching.

According to Watkin (2005:28) learner‟s problem and their cause in vocabulary there are:

a) The students have both had problems with selecting the right word class, and some more activities on word building (adding

bits to the beginnings and endings of a root word to make new, related, words) may help.

b) These errors are both to do with collocation. Collocation is not always predictable. For example, we say „deep trouble‟ but

“shallow trouble‟ is not acceptable.

c) “Messed up‟ seems too informal to be used successfully in a business letter. “Departs‟ seems too formal to use with a friend.

The students do not appreciate the degree of formality associated with these words.

d) The likeliest explanation for each of these is that the student is confused by a false friend. A false friend is when a word in the mother tongue looks like an English word and so the student guesses that it means the same, but in fact, it has a different meaning in English.

e) The learners do not appreciate the grammar associated with the vocabulary that they are using.

3) Problems with spelling and punctuation

Spelling and punctuation are two commonly shared writing difficulties among students. Learning to spell words correctly is expected to take place in the earliest stages of language teaching, yet it is not always the case for spelling may become difficult in some instances. Moreover, spelling is said to be closely interrelated with reading. It supported by, Frith in Abderraouf (2016: 23) argues that “Learning to read should imply learning to spell, and learning to spell should imply learning to read”. However, this is not always the case, for there exist people with excellent reading abilities, but struggle when it comes to spelling words. Then, Banca in Abderraouf (2016:23) states that writing difficulties of relevance to spelling mainly include the misspelling of words which are a result of the irregularities of the English spelling system. This related to the similarities of vowels, for instance, that can be decoded in different spelling. Additionally, Bancha further

explained that spelling mistakes may occur when students are less concentrated due to tiredness or carelessness about the correctness of words. While, Harmer in Abderraouf (2016:23) states that the correspondence between the sound of a word and the way it is spelled is not always obvious”. Furthermore, he indicates that the reason spelling is difficult for students is the fact that not all varieties of English spell the same words in the same way”. For instance, the wayAmerican English pronounce the word

„behavior’, differs from British English „ behavior’.

Next, Oshima and Hogue (1999:245) explain that using correct punctuation is important because punctuation conveys meaning just as words do. It is supported by Harmer (2004:45) that states using punctuations correctly is an important skill. And Graham & Harris in Glynn et al (2006:98) state that writing difficulties may, in large part, be the result of three factors:

1) Lack of proficiency in the text production skills, that is, frequent errors in spelling, the use of upper and lower case, and punctuation.

2) Lack of knowledge relating to the subject content of the script to be written, and/or of the conventions and characteristics of different writing genres.

3) Lack of effective strategies in planning or revising text.

In addition, Nikmah (2016:28) states that the purpose of taking punctuation in writing is making the text clearer and reading easier. There are four functions of punctuation, those are: a) Separating (e.g. a period separating sentences). b) Classifying or enclosing (e.g. parentheses enclosing extraneous information). c) Connecting (e.g. a hyphen connecting a unit modifier). d) Impacting the meaning (e.g. a question mark making an otherwise declarative sentence interrogative).

The function of the punctuation mark is the basic rule-governed and determined whether it is needed or not. The

modern tendency is to punctuate the prevent misreading (open style) rather than to use all punctuation that is allowed by the grammatical structure (close style). The open style allows subjectivity, arbitrariness, and the use of some marks though it results in a more inviting product. The role of the author‟s editor‟s subjectivity is crucial to make a well-punctuate text.

The main function of help the readers comprehend the intention of the writer. It could be done by choosing the appropriate grammar or logical structure of a certain sentence. Punctuation does not warranty that anything goes although it practiced by the good writer that may seem a bland of rule, convention, and idiosyncrasy. The writer must learn when the rules are absolute;

when the conventions give his/her allow to choose some option, such as and, of course, what the option is; and when the writer may follow the heart without forgetting the reading. The effort is done to punctuate effectively. The writer, of course, should consider who the readers are. The younger writer should study the punctuation harder that the older because they already have a good skill of punctuation.

Aragon

There are three kinds of difficulties in writing: problems with grammar, vocabulary, and problem with spelling and punctuation.

Based on the explanation above, it can be concluded that students‟ difficulties in writing influenced by some factors, they are background knowledge, organizing ideas, grammar, vocabulary spelling, and punctuation. In background knowledge, the students difficult when they asked to developing idea and the students did not have background knowledge or experience before. If in background knowledge they have difficult, it will also make the students difficult in organizing ideas and difficult to find the right word or vocabulary or class of words.

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